The present disclosure generally relates to the field of electronics. More particularly, an embodiment of the invention generally relates to a configurable antenna for use with mixed wireless networks.
Some wireless devices may utilize one or more antennas for each communication radio within the device. For example, a mobile phone may include one antenna for receiving radio signals from a cellular tower and another antenna for communicating with WLAN devices. Many WLAN devices use two, three or even more different antennas to improve the communication reliability of the link or throughput. As the number of different radio signal types increases and the need for better communication reliability increases, the number of antennas that a wireless device has to support keeps increasing.
With the addition of multiple antennas comes a number of significant problems. First, the physical space requirement of the antennas becomes significant. If uncontrolled, then this requirement may grow the physical dimensions of the wireless device. Second, in certain form factors (such as a laptop), the antennas and radio modules are separated by a RF cable going through a hinge. As the number of antennas increases, the number of RF cables through the hinge increase. If uncontrolled, the hinge may need to grow as well.